I just thought it would be a neat question and thread; for us to ask ourselves the question of "why do we do what we do?", and also to possibly find a main overall reason for why we all do it.
I would have made it a poll, but i figured that there may be more then one reason.

also, it would be an indicator of where your Work will be more focused on, and the general outcome that you'd be wanting from your Work. :)

for me, i want to find better, truer ways to heal people, and maybe find an overall/general "cure all", that actually works. I also like to learn more things, and from an angle not commonly looked upon.

So for me: medicine, knowledge, and the betterment of self and surroundings.

what about the rest of you? :D

Dizardos

04-21-2009, 10:26 AM

I believe we all do it, because it offers that which 'civilization' simply cannot: much more life. Some tasks take more than an average lifespan to complete and there are thus no alternatives.

Salazius

04-21-2009, 10:44 AM

I have no reasonable answer, I do it because I need to do it, and I love it. That's all.

Cephal

04-21-2009, 04:15 PM

Though I have only just begun - I have a theory that enlightenment and access to the greater collective will allow us to exit this world of scarcity, bringing us into a world of abundance. If you had access to the collective and an ability to control the energy - There are many things to be discovered: from new power sources to better systems of industrial action. I intend to utilize that power once the time is right in order to end war once and for all - To fight in order to end the fighting if I have to. Long have these incessant wars marred humanity and set us back and though I can't say that I don't wish for war - I see the necessity to eliminate it once and for all.. I also aim for the removal of concepts such as race, nation, the and the conflicting fighting prone nature of religions as all of those "categories" tend to divide us and set us aware from the one true fact - We are all humans, and we are all zero until united as one. I also aim to rid our world of those who have sat in the shadows - manipulating and guiding our species to their own purposes for countless centuries. I wish to see humanity spread throughout the stars, to see prosperity, unity, loyalty to the collective, and a world enlightened, not just the few.

There is much I intend to do with it, however I first must unlock the allegory to prove the foundations of my theory. A new world, my "Ideal Future" lies beyond that.

kerkring

04-21-2009, 04:32 PM

My primary motive is to be able to establish communication with my Higher Self in order to obtain the knowledge that I need to accomplish what I was placed in the physical world for.

Other motives would be to be able to help sick people, either with physical products or with energetic healing, and to help others re-establish contact with their Higher Self. The latter would seem to be one of the most effective ways of improving the conditions on the planet.

Seth-Ra

04-21-2009, 06:15 PM

Based on the answers given so far, it would seem that "understanding", and the ability to "help others" is a key driving force behind our desire to do this Work.

Thank you all for the input so far, and for the fast replies. :)

Play_Dough

04-21-2009, 07:46 PM

Why I study alchemy!

http://www.imageuploads.net/ims/pic.php?u=32803xZHKX&i=167835

Darin Hamel

04-22-2009, 01:43 PM

I want to ascend and if I cant do that then I will settle with physical immortality..... and no..... I am not joking.

Awani

09-03-2009, 03:21 AM

If you study alchemy you automatically study everything else of significance!

:cool:

Ghislain

09-03-2009, 10:04 PM

Ditto Deviadah

Zephyr

09-03-2009, 10:08 PM

Well, I am interested in self-transformation, for the purposes of achieving a higher level of wisdom and harmony with my environment. I am interested in living systems, and in open-system alchemies that relate to healing ecosystems, or damaged spaces in the bio/psycosphere. I have been practicing different physical training excercises that change how my brain/body works for some time seeking to increase intelligence, immune system, hostile effect resistance/transformation, and energy preservation. It struck me once that while lead could be transformed into gold, that gold could be transformed into compassion, and I guess I am interested in becoming better able to manage my dark-side, such that my personal prescence in the world has a beneficial effect over all to the living system that is the cosmos. Small stuff, really... :rolleyes:
-A-

solomon levi

09-04-2009, 02:59 AM

For me, alchemy is one of many practical spiritual paths that introduce me
to my potential. I want to know myself - all that I am; all I can be... not just
the little me with its petty concerns and mundane boxed-up existence.

I started this journey a long time ago. I suppose I was really looking for
power at that time - the ability to control and influence situations around
me for my own personal gain. But I've become more humble over the years
and I've learned to accept my fate whatever it may be/become. However
much life I have, whether that of a mortal or of an Adept, I'll spend it
continuing to worship the great mystery that I am, that you are, that Life is.

For me, alchemy is part of that romance, that mystery.

rockfate1111

09-04-2009, 05:58 AM

I want to see behind the veil... I want to know the One Truth. How did we all come to be... and why?

I feel Alchemy is the path that has led me and will lead me to these answers, through a better understanding of the workings of this universe.

-ROCKFATE1111:D

Ghislain

09-04-2009, 03:53 PM

For me the how is possibly explained in a book by Sean Sinjin called, "Meme". The whys and wherefores is what I am looking for.

Yvain

09-14-2009, 08:35 PM

I just thought it would be a neat question and thread; for us to ask ourselves the question of "why do we do what we do?", and also to possibly find a main overall reason for why we all do it.
I would have made it a poll, but i figured that there may be more then one reason.

also, it would be an indicator of where your Work will be more focused on, and the general outcome that you'd be wanting from your Work. :)

for me, i want to find better, truer ways to heal people, and maybe find an overall/general "cure all", that actually works. I also like to learn more things, and from an angle not commonly looked upon.

So for me: medicine, knowledge, and the betterment of self and surroundings.

what about the rest of you? :D

1. I want to be immortal (so far as I haven't died yet, I've achieved this aim :p) which means not only not dying but also not staying dead.

2. I want to be perpetually young and resistant to disease.

3. I want wealth, in the sense of material wealth for the corpus, physiological and intellectual wealth for the animae, and spiritual edification (though I dislike using the word spiritual because of the connotations tied to it) for the spiritus.

Wolfsbane

09-24-2009, 10:06 AM

So I can open the gates of the dead-realm, and come back.

Smoke

03-05-2010, 07:24 AM

Seth Rah:
You give the most beautiful answer to your question: To heal.

We are all sick people. I don't know if alzheimer, aids, cancer or age, are worst than egophaty, intolerance and greed. The cure should free us form mental, physical, psychic & spiritual distortions. The cure should produce a pristine being (like a child untouched by our mental habits, our sick culture, and our artificial desires). Perhaps, even immortality can be cured!
The healed is the creature from tomorrow.

Let's hope we can be still here to see him manage to get to be.

Best wishes

True Initiate

03-06-2010, 09:00 PM

I do it because i want to prepare myself for contact with demon's, angel's Jinn's and Nymph's.Alchemy is just a beginning of my journey...

Seth-Ra

03-06-2010, 09:11 PM

not trying to run the thread ofcourse, but you've got me curious Puffer, what preparation does one need before meeting pretty little nymphs? I could see it with the others, but the nymphs seem... less stressful. :D

And if memory serves, if ya get good with one, she'll give ya immortality to stay with her = win - win. ;)

(if thats what one is after, ofcourse. ;) )

~Seth-Ra

nav2010

04-05-2010, 03:55 PM

I study it because I am curious. I'm curious to know if things which I regard in the back of my mind to be very unlikely are or could be very likely. There are many things the human race do not understand, the beginning of life, the Universe and so forth. A flowering plant has no ears, no eyes, no senses whatsoever yet it produces colours and odours which attract bee's. It cannot possibly know that bee's exist, it cannot possibly know that the colours and odours it produced made it successful because it has no means of communicating with it's offspring. Natural selection has some strange means of applying itself which are not understandable by us and I think Alchemy is very similar in it's properties. We know it's there but we don't quite get the idea yet.

Ghislain

04-05-2010, 05:35 PM

There are many things the human race do not understand, the beginning of life, the Universe and so forth. A flowering plant has no ears, no eyes, no senses whatsoever yet it produces colours and odours which attract bee's. It cannot possibly know that bee's exist, it cannot possibly know that the colours and odours it produced made it successful because it has no means of communicating with it's offspring.

One answer may be that all the flowers that did not attract bees did not get
pollenated and thus had no offspring, which only leaves the ones the bees are
attracted to.

There have been many offers on the table as to what created the Universe...who
knows...but life from the chemical soup through evolution looks good if you read
Dawkins. It may even explain our intolerant greedy egophatical behaviour
Smoke :)

Where did you get that word Smoke? I Googled it and only got one result.
This has a name but I cant remember what it is, but you found one. :D

http://forum.alchemyforums.com/picture.php?albumid=25&pictureid=143

Sorry if I shouldn't have replied in this thread as I guess it should be left
unquestioned but I did, so no going back now :o

Ghislain

rebis

04-06-2010, 05:33 AM

I can't in all honesty profess to study alchemy deeply. I access mostly secondary sources to reach into what seems to be an infinite mine of allegory, symbol and metaphor. These I use in a transformative process - transforming my Self (certainly) and the world (most probably).

lillith93

04-11-2010, 01:26 PM

I'm still not sure why I'm studying Alchemy. I feel a strong urge to learn more about it though, and as I do I'm starting to learn to handle things in my daily life a lot better. I've also enjoyed doing some experiments of my own. I feel like there is so much more to it than what I see though, and I have every intention of finding out what it is.

Lillith

annabelle_lee

03-01-2012, 11:53 AM

I study alchemy because it is the only path that I resonate strongly with. I study alchemy because I am supposed to. *shrug*

III

03-03-2012, 07:11 AM

I continue the practice of Alchemy because I woke up into it in 3rd grade. I'd been at it a very long time and I wasn't about to quit. Besides that isn't much of a choice.

teofrast40

03-03-2012, 04:41 PM

Hallo everybody,
interesting thread, did not notice it.
I study alchemy because I can't help doing it.
Since a few years it's my primary obsession.
I knew her in my twenties firstly from contemporary authors, and considered it a quite boring and lifeless hobby.
Then one day I came across the Cosmopolite, and got totally fascinated.
That was my first classic. Since then I'm no longer able to read anything else than alchemical literature pre-1850.
I studied languages to get a better hold of the sources that, incidentally, in this lucky years are all avalaible for free in original edition on the net. All we need is time and will to study.
I do not ask anything to the study of alchemy, as I'm simply in love with her.

With humility
t

vega33

03-03-2012, 07:45 PM

Why? Oh, there are so many reasons! :)

Why should be want to study and probe into the first cause of all created things? Why would we want to believe in the patently obvious (to a non-modernized culture): an ensouled universe, throbbing with consciousness in every crack and spire? Is it because the idea that new matter/new metals grow seems so logically correct and in line with peoples existing observations about plant consciousness?

Is it because of the fact that the statements of certain alchemists resonate with us, such as the Cosmopolite who says that even in his modern day people neglected the study of what is right in front of our eyes, ie natural generation (and we recognize this is still the case today despite the advent of modern biology)? What about the haunting dialogue of Fulcanelli on "The Paradox of the Unlimited Progress of Science"?

For me, it is all these reasons and more. I think like many, having recognized and caught governmental or "scientific" institutions flat out lying, fudging data in studies, studies sponsored by corporations who are invested in a specific outcome for a study (eg pharmaceuticals), and through my own experiments on my own health (discovering what some said was BS is actually true, and vice versa), something emerges in ones consciousness... a kind of personal insurrection against a corrupt system where empowerment through self-gained knowledge (of both self and other) is the only way. Alchemy seems to offer this path... with its exhortations to "follow Nature, study Nature". Walking in Nature with my partner, examining natural phenomena such as thermal parks with bubbling natural sulphuric acid, or with my photography getting close enough to a leaf on a tree to see its fine, intelligently laid out structure... learning about the way the Creator puts together his masterpieces... thats the shiznit!

Seeker of Truth

03-14-2012, 09:06 AM

This forum and what I have found in it started my true interest Alchemy. Truth is the ultimate goal, the experience and recognition of Truth. Alchemy seems like a great way to keep the great moment of Truth once I have it (even though I already do have Truth, we all do and we all are). Alchemy is food for the Soul and I am hungry. My compass guiding me; Unconditional Love Kindness Strength Compassion Imagination Freedom and Truth for all always.

I suppose that most people enjoin the biological imperative to reproduce, and in so doing, they are creating what Ken Wilber termed The Atman Project in his first book by the same name. The Atman Project is a surrogate for personal immortality. One 'hopes' that one's 'name,' or 'bloodline,' or DNA will continue indefinitely. I have never had a desire for children, and that led me to marry my ex-wife, who was a non-maternal female, and neither did she wish to procreate.

Being very introverted, the alchemical quest - even before extending my interest to physical, laboratory practice, led me what Taoist alchemy and yoga calls "The Immortal Foetus." In Western occultism, this is the nurturance of a 'spiritual body' - not necessarily the 'resurrection body' (which I think is a Causal Plane phenomenon, and not a 'body' at all, but an identification with the Pleroma). It may well be the 'astral body,' is an intermediary vehicle for consciousness at physical death. Perhaps this is the 'body' that experiences the Bardo (Bardo Thodol - The Tibetan Book of the Dead), the Gnostic Archons, or the demons noted in the Egyptian Book of Coming Forth by Day (Egyptian Book of the Dead).

So instead of putting 'hope' in the perfection of future generations of my biological offspring, in space-time, I have focused upon the Realization of Wholeness, in the Present. The attainment of The Philosopher's Stone, for me, is equivalent to this "Immortal Foetus," - a personification of the Tibetan Buddhist 'Diamond Body' (Dorje) - an identity of the Five Buddha Wisdom Energies. Sometimes the Eternal Self is personified as a 'foetus,' or a homunculus, or in the Upanishads, as 'a tiny golden man, the size of a grown man's thumb, situated in the Hridayam [Heart Cave].' Sometimes the Eternal Self is described as a stone, a diamond - 'adamantine' or indestructible 'body,' which is no body with form at all.

I neither wish to get caught up in the physical correlates of chemistry, nor in the psychical images illustrated by depth psychology. At the intersection of the Physical and the Psychical is the Pneumatic, which gives rise to all three - Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury. Remaining in the Pneuma [Spirit], is Daedalus flying between the fiery Sun above, and the salty Water below, not flying too high and falling into the dark depths like the unwary Icarus. The Eternality of Spirit is unquestionable, the Body Putrefies or is Calcined to ash, it is the eternalization of the Soul that I doubt. The task as I see it is to Realize one's Ultimate Identity as Spirit, and this is the attainment of The Stone. Attachment to one's Soul, one's fixed Sulphur as it were, leads one to vampyric fantasies of personal immortality. I am reminded of Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty Nexus-6 replicant character at the end of the film 'Blade Runner.' If the Egyptians were correct, a volatilized Sulphur (Ba) can reunite with Mercury (Ka), and produce an Akh (an Osiris), which is to say, Eternal Life, but to me, I cannot grok any personal identity, or memory of a brief temporal existence being anything but Hell if eternalized. No, like the line in Sir Edwin Arnold's poem, 'The Light of Asia,' "...the dewdrop slips into the Shining Sea..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOW4QiOD-oc

Ghislain

03-14-2012, 09:34 PM

I like that MTG, passing on the DNA...Richard Dawkins in his book, "The Selfish Gene", went along those lines, but DNA is just a blueprint for another vessel.
Obviously it will remain fairly untouched now as it's a good vessel for the purpose; that is unless we start messing with it :)

What is the vessel for...that would be my question and that is why I'm here in AF...but I have a good idea about that now.

Another good question would be where is here?

Ghislain

MarkostheGnostic

03-14-2012, 10:14 PM

Another good question would be where is here?

Why, 3rd rock from the Sun of course. Southern-most North American point for me. More and more specifics until the Point in my Hridayam.

Lapis Solaris

03-15-2012, 09:42 AM

Because I would like to further what wisdom I may possess, to gain knowledge and understanding where I lack. I want to be perfect, whole and pure, just as my Creator made me to be and to fulfill the role/path that has been set before me. :)